Once, while Lincoln was passing several days at Fortress Monroe, waiting for certain military movements, he employed his leisure in reading Shakespeare. While thus engaged one day, looking through into an adjoining apartment, where was seated Colonel Cannon, of General Wool's staff, he called to him, as if longing for fellowship in his thoughts, and asked him to listen while he read from the book. He then recited a few passages from 66 Hamlet" and from "Macbeth." Then, turning to "King John," he read the passage in which Constance bewails the loss of her boy. Closing the book and recalling the words, Lincoln asked Colonel Cannon if he had ever dreamed of being with one whom he had lost in death, only to wake and find the vision fled.

"Just so," he said, "I dream of my boy Willie." The loving father bowed his head and wept as he recalled the words of Constance:

"And, Father Cardinal, I have heard you say That we shall see and know our friends in Heaven: If that be true, I shall see my boy again."

It was this bereavement, I think, that made Mr. Lincoln and his wife very tender and indulgent toward their youngest boy. It seemed almost impossible for father or mother to be stern to this boisterous and irrepressible youngster. Besides this, he had many qualities that endeared him to those who knew him, and there were circumstances that made almost everybody very kindly disposed toward him. If there was ever a boy in danger of being "spoiled," this youngest son of the President was that lad. Much of the time it was impossible that he should not be left to run at large. He was foolishly caressed and petted by people who wanted favors of his father, and who took this way of making a friend in the family, as they thought; and he was living in the midst of a most exciting epoch in the country's history, when a boy in the White House was in a strange and somewhat unnatural atmosphere. But I am bound to say that Tad, although he doubtless had his wits sharpened by being in such strange surroundings, was never anything else, while I knew him, but a boisterous, rollicking, and absolutely real boy. was not "old for his years," as we sometimes say of precocious children, nor was he burdened with care before his time. He was a big-hearted and fresh-faced youngster, and when he went away from the White House, after his father's tragic end, he carried with him, from the midst of sorrows and associations that are now historic, the same boyish frankness and simplicity that he took into it.

He

The boy was named Thomas after his grandfather, the father of the great President. An unfortunate difficulty in his speech prevented him

from speaking plainly, and strangers could hardly understand what he said. The nearest he could come to saying his own name, when quite a little fellow, was "Tad," and the name clung to him for many a year. In the family he was usually known as "Taddie," but even this nickname was shortened, and those who were fortunate enough to be near the President during his term of government will never forget "Tad," the tricksy sprite of the White House.

In those days, it was the custom of people who objected to the prosecution of the war to speak of Lincoln as "a tyrant." This seems silly enough now, when all the commotion and bitterness of the war have passed away; but even then, to those who knew the mild-mannered and tenderhearted President, the word had no meaning. One day, going to the White House, I met a very eminent public man, who, with a queer look, said, “I have just had an interview with the tyrant of the White House." Then, noticing my surprise, he added — "Tad," and went away laughing at his little joke. If there was any tyrant in that house during Lincoln's administration, his name was Tad. The boy certainly did rule everybody who came within his power. Without being domineering or unpleasant with his imperiousness, he had a fashion of issuing orders that brooked no delay, no refusal. He overran the White House and the grounds. It was seldom that he had playmates; but, to hear the noise that Tad contrived to make, one would suppose that there were at least six boys wherever he happened to be. The day was passed in a series of enterprises, panics, and commotions. Tad invaded every part of the great establishment, and he was an uncommonly knowing person who could tell where the agile lad was likely next to appear, at any hour of the day. Now his whoop would be heard as he galloped his pony to the stable-door, and anon he would be expostulating with his dogteam, as he trained them on the lawn by the side of the house next the Potomac. (said to be from Boston) were one day almost frozen with horror as they were reverentially stalking about the famous East Room. There was an outburst and a clatter at the most distant end of the corridor leading to the family apartments, a cry of "Get out of the way, there!" and Tad, driving a tandem team of goats harnessed to a chair, careered into the state apartment, once around, and then out to the front of the house.

A party of ladies

One of his admiring friends gave him a box of tools. This was, for a few days, a mine of pleasure to Tad. There was nothing within his reach that was not sawed, bored, chiseled, or hacked with some one of the tools of that collection. At first, he proposed setting up a cabinet-shop for the man

ufacture of furniture for the hospitals. Then the repairing of a wagon engaged his attention; but when he began to try experiments with the oldfashioned mahogany chairs in the East Room, the box of tools mysteriously disappeared.

Of course, Tad knew no law, no restraint, that should bar any part of the house against him. So it sometimes happened that, while the President and his Cabinet were anxiously discussing affairs of state, and were in the midst of questions of great moment, Tad would burst into the room, bubbling with excitement, and insist that his complaint or request should be attended to at once. Sometimes it was the woes of some ill-clad petitioner, repulsed by the ushers, that aroused his childish wrath. At other times he would insist on being allowed to drag before the President of the United States a particularly youthful suitor, whose tale he had heard for himself, and who appeared in the presence with an air of mingled terror and amusement. There was a certain Cabinet officer whom he did not like, and when he had burst into his father's privacy, one morning, to find the objectionable functionary there, Tad, unabashed, cried out, What are you here so early for? What do you want?" It may be added that office-seekers generally he regarded with undisguised contempt.

In

While Mr. F. B. Carpenter, the artist, was at work on his picture of Lincoln and his Cabinet, it was found necessary to make some photographic studies of the room in which the President and his council were to be represented as assembled. his book, "Six Months at the White House," Mr. Carpenter tells a characteristic story of Tad's opposition to all attempts to infringe upon what he considered to be his rights. While the photographers were at work, Mr. Carpenter took them to a room which could be darkened for their purposes, but of which Tad had lately taken possession and had fitted up as a miniature theater, with drop-curtain, seats, orchestra, and benches.

Everything was going on well, when suddenly there was an uproar.

Tad took great offense at the occupancy of his room without his consent, and, turning everybody out, locked the door. In his anger, the little fellow put all the blame on Mr. Carpenter, and absolutely refused to allow the photographers even to go into the room for their apparatus and chemicals, there locked up. He pocketed the key, and went to his father in high dudgeon.

Mr. Lincoln was sitting in his chair, one photograph having been already taken. He mildly told Tad to go and open the door.

Tad went off to his mother's room, muttering and refusing to obey, Mr. Carpenter following and vainly entreating him to open the door.

Presently Lincoln said, when Mr. Carpenter returned, “Has not the boy opened the door?"

On being told that he had not, the patient father, compressing his lips, strode off to the family apartments, and soon returned with the key to the theater, which he unlocked himself, saying:

"There, go ahead; it's all right now." The President went back to his office, and, resuming his seat, said, as if in apology for Tad :

"Tad is a peculiar child. He was violently excited when I went to him. I said, 'Tad, do you know you are making your father a great deal of trouble?' He burst into tears, and instantly gave me the key."

A friend of the Lincoln family once sent a fine live turkey to the White House, with the request that it should be served on the President's Christmas table.

But Christmas was then several weeks

off, and in the interim Tad won the confidence and esteem of the turkey, as he did the affection of every living thing with which he came in contact. "Jack," as the fowl had been named, was an object of great interest to Tad, who fed him, petted him, and began to teach him to follow his young master. One day, just before Christmas, 1863, while the President was engaged with one of his Cabinet ministers on an affair of great moment, Tad burst into the room like a bomb-shell, sobbing and crying with rage and indignation. The turkey was about to be killed. Tad had procured from the executioner a stay of proceedings while he flew to lay the case before the President. Jack must not be killed; it was wicked.

"But," said the President, "Jack was sent here to be killed and eaten for this very Christmas." “I can't help it,” roared Tad, between his sobs. "He's a good turkey, and I don't want him killed.” The President of the United States, pausing in the midst of his business, took a card and wrote on it an order of reprieve. The turkey's life was spared, and Tad, seizing the precious bit of paper, fled to set him at liberty. In course of time Jack became very tame, and roamed at will about the premises. He was a prime favorite with the soldiers - a company of Pennsylvania "Bucktails ”— who were on guard at the house. The tents of these soldiers were at the bottom of the south lawn, on the Potomac side of the house. In the summer of 1864, the election for President being then pending, a commission was sent on from Pennsylvania to take the votes of the Pennsylvania soldiers in Washington. While the "Bucktails" were voting, Tad rushed into his father's room, the windows of which looked out on the lawn, crying, 66 Oh, the soldiers are voting for Lincoln for Presient!" He dragged his father to the window and insisted that he should see this remarkable thing.

The turkey, now grown tall and free-mannered, stalked about among the soldiers, regarding the proceedings with much interest.

great deal of native shrewdness. The White House was infested with a numerous horde of office-seekers. From day to day these men crowded

Tad paused for a moment, nonplussed at the unexpected question; then rallying, he replied, "Why, no, of course not. He is n't of age yet." Great was Tad's curiosity, in 1864, to know what was meant by the President's proclamation for a day of fasting and prayer. His inquiries were not satisfactorily answered, but from the servants he learned, to his great dismay, that there would be nothing eaten in the White House from sunrise to sunset on Fast Day. The boy, who was blessed with a vigorous appetite, took measures to escape from the rigors of the day. It happened that, just before Fast Day came, the family carriage was brought out of its house to be cleaned and put in order. Tad stood by, with feelings of alarm, while a general overhauling of the vehicle went on, the coachman dusting, rubbing, and pulling things about, quite unconscious of Tad's anxious watch on the proceedings. Pretty soon, drawing out a queerlooking bundle from one of the boxes under the seat, the man brought to light a part of a loaf of bread, some bits of cold meat, and various other fragments of food from the larder. Tad, now ready to burst with anger and disappointment, cried, "Oh! oh! give that up, I say! That's my Fast Day picnic!" The poor lad, from dread of going hungry, had cautiously hidden, from day to day, a

Sometimes they were so numerous as to line the halls all the way down the stairs. It was not long before Tad found out what this assemblage meant, and it then became one of his greatest diversions, when other resources failed, to go around among the office-seekers and sympathetically inquire what they wanted, how long they had waited, and how

portion of food against the day of fasting, and had stood by while his hoard was in danger hoping that it might escape the eyes of the serv ants. He was consoled by a promise from his mother, to whom he ran with his tale of woe, that he should not suffer hunger on Fast Day, even though his father, the President, had proclaimed a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer for all the people.

Mingled with his boyish simplicity, Tad had a

much longer they proposed to wait. To some he gave good advice, telling them to go home and chop wood for a living. Others he tried to dismiss by volunteering to speak to his father in their behalf, if they would promise not to come again. Many of these people were at the White House for weeks and even months, never missing a day, unless they learned that the President was out of town, or otherwise absent from the house.

Tad levied tribute on the men whose faces he

had learned to know. Once he mounted guard at the foot of the staircase and compelled every passenger to pay an admission fee of five cents,-"for the benefit of the Sanitary Fund,” as he explained. Most of the visitors took it in good part, and some of the fawning creatures, glad of an opportunity to earn the good-will of the little fellow, paid their way with a "stamp" of some considerable value. This venture was so successful that Tad resolved on having one of the Sanitary Commission fairs then so much in vogue all over the country. He placed a table in the grand corridor, or entrance hall, of the White House, stocked it with a few broken toys, some purchases of fruit, sundry articles of food begged from the family pantry, and a lot of miscellaneous odds and ends contributed by admiring friends. Before night, the sanitary fair of the White House was closed out. No man who looked as if he had money in his pocket was permitted to pass into the House that day without first buying something of Master Lincoln's stock in trade.

His success in this venture emboldened him soon afterward to branch out in a larger speculation. Having saved up quite a sum of pocketmoney, he bought out the entire stock of an old woman who sold apples and gingerbread near the Treasury building. A pair of trestles and a board, extorted from the carpenters employed on the building, gave the young merchant his counter, and he set up his shop in the grand, historic portico of the White House, much to the horror of some of the eminently respectable people who passed by and beheld this most undignified proceeding. Before noon, almost every office-seeker who entered had bought a luncheon, under compulsion, from the alert young shop-keeper, who drove a brisk trade as long as his goods lasted. When Tad had sold out all he had to sell, a goodly lot of the fractional currency of those times was stuffed into his pockets, his hat, and his little fist. He was "the President's son," and that was enough for the flatterers, who were glad to buy of him. But Tad was too generous and open-handed to be long a gainer by any such operations. Before night, capital and profits had been squandered, and the little speculator went penniless to bed.

Everything that Tad did was done with a certain rush and rude strength which were peculiar to him. I was once sitting with the President in the library, when Tad tore into the room in search of something, and, having found it, he threw himself on his father like a small thunderbolt, gave him one wild, fierce hug, and, without a word, fled from the room before his father could put out his hand to detain him. With all his boyish roughness, Tad had a warm heart and a tender conscience. He

abhorred falsehood as he did books and study. Tutors came and went, like changes of the moon. None staid long enough to learn much about the boy; but he knew them before they had been one day in the house. "Let him run," his father would say; "there 's time enough yet for him to learn his letters and get poky. Bob was just such a little rascal, and now he is a very decent boy." It was curious, however, to see how Tad comprehended many practical realities that are far beyond the grasp of most boys. Even when he could scarcely read, he knew much about the cost of things, the details of trade, the principles of mechanics, and the habits of animals, all of which showed the activity of his mind and the odd turn of his thoughts. His father took great interest in everything that concerned Tad, and, when the long day's work was done, and the little chap had related to the President all that had moved him or had taken up his attention during the daylight hours, and had finally fallen asleep under a drowsy cross-examination, the weary father would turn once more to his desk, and work on into the night, for his cares never ended. Then, shouldering the sleeping child, the man for whom millions of good men and women nightly prayed took his way through silent corridors and passages to his boy's bed-chamber.

One day, Tad, in search of amusement, loitered into the office of the Secretary of War, and Mr. Stanton, for the fun of the thing, commissioned him a lieutenant of United States Volunteers. This elated the boy so much that he went off immediately and ordered a quantity of muskets sent to the White House, and then he organized and drilled the house-servants and gardeners, and, without attracting anybody's attention, he actually discharged the regular sentries about the premises and ordered his unwilling recruits on duty as guards.

Robert Lincoln soon discovered what had been done, and as he thought it a great hardship that men who had been at work all day should be obliged to keep watch during the night to gratify a boyish freak, he remonstrated. But Tad would listen to nothing from his elder brother, and Robert appealed to his father, who only laughed at the matter as a good joke. Tad soon tired, however, of his self-imposed duties and went to bed. The drafted men were quietly relieved from duty, and there was no guard at the President's mansion that night, much to Mr. Lincoln's relief. He never approved of the precaution of mounting guard at the White House. While Tad sported his commission as lieutenant, he cut quite a military figure. From some source he procured a uniform suitable to his supposed rank, and thus

It had been intended to celebrate Tad's tenth birthday, April 4, 1863, by a visit to the Army of the Potomac, then encamped on the banks of the Rappahannock, opposite Fredericksburg. The President, at the suggestion of Mrs. Lincoln, had thought that it would cheer the soldiers to see the familiar face of the chief magistrate among them before their anticipated departure for the front. But other business had intervened, and it was not until the boy's birthday had actually arrived, and with it a present of a fine pony, that we got away from Washington. Our party consisted of Tad, his father and mother, Mr. Edward Bates, the Attorney-General of the United States, and two friends of the family. Toward evening a violent and unseasonable snow-storm came up, and the little steamer that was taking us from Washington to Aquia Creek (the landing-place of the army) was compelled to cast anchor for the night under the lee of a headland of the Potomac. By that time Tad had examined every nook and corner of the steamer, and as the President's party were the only passengers on board, he had full swing during the trip. After we had anchored, Tad, resolved to employ advantageously every moment of the time, rigged up a fishing-line and went valiantly to work, in the midst of the snow-storm, to catch fish for supper. He promptly reported every bite to his father or mother, and when he finally rushed into their presence with a single very small and very bony fish, a proud and happy boy was he. But we actually did have a smoking platter of fish for supper, much to the delight of Tad, who had marked the three fish of his own catching by cutting off their tails.

During the five days of our stay in the Army of the Potomac, Tad was a most restless little chap. At General Hooker's head-quarters there was a bakery, a printing-office, a telegraph station, and sundry other small establishments, all in shanties or tents. We were quartered in large "hospital tents," as they were called. By the end of the first day, Tad had exhausted everything in sight, and was ready to go home to his beloved pony. But there were reviews and parades to come, and for these the President must stay. Each day, beginning with the second of our stay, was taken up with a review. While these lasted Tad was happy. A handsome young soldier was detailed to act as escort to the boy, and a little gray horse consoled him, for the time, for the absence of his own pony. That long series of reviews in the Army of the Potomac, just before the battle of Chancellorsville, will never be forgotten by the participants. Over hill and dale dashed the brilliant cavalcade of the

The soldiers soon learned of Tad's presence in the army, and wherever he went on horseback he easily divided the honors with his father. I can not begin to tell you how the men cheered and shouted and waved their hats when they saw the dear face and tall figure of the good President, then the best-beloved man in the world; but to these men of war, far away from home and children, the sight of that fresh-faced and laughing boy seemed an inspiration. They cheered like mad. When told that he ought to doff his cap to the soldiers who saluted him, Tad sturdily replied: "Why, that 's the way General Hooker and Father do; but I'm only a boy."

When night came on, and there was nothing for Tad to do but to hang around his father and mother, he grew weary of the army, and longed for that pony at home. Then he would begin to ask why he could not go back. But it was in vain he reminded his father that the soldiers did not like visitors, and in vain he told his mother that women were not wanted in the army. Finally, his father, to be rid of the boy's importunities, said: "Tad, I'll make a bargain with you. If you will agree not to say anything about going home until we are ready to go, I will give you that dollar that you want so badly." For Tad had needed, as he thought, a whole dollar in cash. Being a truthful story-teller, I must say that Tad did sometimes, later during our stay, murmur at the long sojourn in the army; but, while we were waiting for the ambulances to take us to the station on our way back to the steam-boat landing, Lincoln took out a dollar note, saying, "Now, Taddie, my son, do you think you have earned this?"

Tad hung his head and answered never a word; but the President handed him the note, saying: "Well, my son, although I don't think you have kept your part of the bargain, I will keep mine,